


Flora's Adventures in Ghostland

by RobberBaroness



Category: The Turn of the Screw - Henry James
Genre: Gen, Pastiche
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:27:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21719905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobberBaroness/pseuds/RobberBaroness
Summary: An excerpt from the beloved children's novel.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 34
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Flora's Adventures in Ghostland

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skazka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skazka/gifts).



Flora looked about the circle of graves for anything bearing her brother’s name, or at the very least the symbol of a lamb engraved on a headstone. (She always had felt Miles would have objected to that and wished to be buried with the distinction and dignity due to adult, but being dead, it was not his choice.) She saw nothing of the sort and sighed. How much of the land of the dead was she going to have to traipse about in one night? Or perhaps it would not be a single night but forever, for Flora did not know when or how she was ever going to get out.

She was a clever girl. She would think of something. She had solved the riddle posed by the archangel in the ring of toadstools, and managed to defeat the unpleasant obelisk, after all.

Turning away from the useless grave circle, she noticed something very strange perched upon a tomb. At first she thought it was a large bird, but it was merely a very birdlike woman with sleeves billowing out like wings. Flora peered closer, and was quite surprised indeed to realize she knew the woman with the enormous sleeves.

“Miss James?” she asked. “What are you doing here? Did you die, too?” Flora thought that sounded like a great shame. Miss James really hadn’t been so bad, all things considered, and given her established antipathy towards ghosts, it would have been truly disappointing for her to become one.

“Hmm?” said her former governess. “Oh no, I have simply fainted. I faint a great deal these days. It is what comes of seeing monstrous things and being unable to stop them.”

“You should stay out of the sun and drink plenty of water,” said Flora. “Perhaps you would not faint as much.”

“Oh, Flora. You always were such a precocious child. How have you been faring without me?”

“Not well at all, considering my brother so recently died. I don’t entirely blame you, so don’t worry about that. Have you seen him here? The ghosts of Quint and Jessel were seen going this way by a raven, and I am afraid he might be with them.”

“I think,” said Miss James, quite rudely ignoring her question, “that you have not been working on your reciting. It shows a great lack of discipline. That is the trouble with children these days, a lack of discipline. If children showed greater discipline, they could resist corruption by ghosts. The fact that you have been spirited away to Ghostland is a great indication that you have not been working on your reciting.”

“That may be,” said Flora (though she thought Miss James was being very impolite), “but if I must work on my reciting, I should like to do so after I have found my-”

“It is time,” said Miss James, “to work on your reciting. Repeat after me:

A is for Alice who fell down a hole

B is for Bella who gave up her soul

C is for Claudia, bit by a fiend

D is for Dorothy- was it a dream?

E is for Eve and the very first mother

F is for Flora-”

Flora knew the next line was likely to be ‘F is for Flora, who searched for her brother’, and sensed besides that if she allowed Miss James to go on, she would likely go through the whole alphabet with her tales of woeful and adventurous girls, so she began to quietly back away, hoping to vanish before the inevitable turn of the poem towards her own person. Quite a lot of people had been reciting poetry at her this evening, and she was not fond of finding old figures from her life doing it as well. If she finally found Quint and Jessel where they were keeping her brother, and even they ended up reciting poetry, she would know this was truly a land of the mad and not merely the dead.

It was hard to sneak silently through a thicket, as her every step was disturbing yet another branch, but soon enough Flora was out of range of the poetry. Before her stood a maze of hedges, and to each side of the maze was a great mountain wall.

“I don’t think I fancy going through a maze,” Flora mused aloud, “but I suppose Miles must be on the other side of it, and if he can solve the maze I cannot very well let him outshine me. Besides which, it will put more obstacle between myself and Miss James’ attempts to recite poetry.” Setting her shoulders and her jaw determinedly, she took her first steps into the maze.

It occurred to Flora that she had once read (or been read) the story of someone navigating a maze who used a ball of yarn to always see where he had already gone and where the way out was (the yarn having been given to him by a girl much cleverer than he was, naturally.) Unfortunately, she carried no yarn with her, her hair ribbons were far too short, and she did not quite like the idea of using the hem of her dress as it might ruin it forever. Contemplating her path, she looked down at the ground beneath her and saw that it was entirely covered with gravel.

“If I kick this up when I walk,” Flora considered, “I will leave a trail which shows which way I have already gone.” Besides which, she was ordinarily forbidden by any of her governesses from kicking up dirt or rocks, and she liked the idea that now she was finally free to do so. Miles would have liked the chance to kick up dirt as well, and this thought made her sad- but only for a moment. She was going to retrieve him from the ghosts of Quint and Jessel and then he was going to be free to kick up all the dirt he wanted, and no one would stop him because they would be too happy to see him alive again.

“I  _ am _ going to retrieve my brother,” Flora said before entering the maze, kicking up gravel as she did so for emphasis.

**Author's Note:**

> I loved your suggestion of an Alice in Wonderland type story! Miss James' poem is, of course, modeled after Edward Gorey's Gashlycrumb Tinies. Many thanks to my beta Assimbya.


End file.
